Criminal Justice

Criminal Justice

1. Describe the American experience with crime during the last half century. What noteworthy crimainal incidents or activities can you identify during that time, and what social and economic conditions might have produced then?

Answer

Over time, our nation has swung the balance towards the crime control model and thus puts more and more emphasis on the reduction of street level crime. Street level crime consists of everything from burglary, rape, and all types of drug felonies. These crimes cost American people millions of dollars a year, whether it is in direct effect from a crime or it has to do with the after affects of a crime.

Crime costs in all areas. If we have to pay for it all we eventually have to take away from other things. For every dollar we spend on fighting crime, we take away from other social services, which include but are not limited to, education, public health, and the infrastructure of roads and bridges. Ironically, crime funding may intensify criminogenic factors. Less money for education means less access to education. Less education can lead to less opportunity for legitimate success, leading in turn to conditions of strain and hopelessness, which historically have been associated to increased risk for criminal like behaviour (Dworkin, 2005). According to the National Association of State Budget Officers, the total cost of state-issued bonds to build prisons surpasses the total issued to build colleges.

2. Violations of the criminal law can be of many different types and can very in severity?

Answer

Also coming to the forefront of the crime control model is the racist and bias tendencies it seems to make. Some claim that the system is bias and racist and some claim that it is the product of our society. It seems that the poorer, less working, poorly educated, and non-white a person is, the more likely it is that you will be in jail. Thirty-two percent of people in jail make less than $5000 a year, 32% of the people in the system are unemployed and almost half of the prison population has less than a high school diploma for an education (Robinson, 2002).

This issue of race then comes into play. Most of these are unintended correlations, but nonetheless the numbers speak for themselves. The black and Hispanic populations make up for 25% of all people in America; however, they make up for 74% of our nations prison population. Another ...